Dawn is the first probe ever to enter orbit around one of the objects in the main asteroid belt that circles the sun between Mars and Jupiter. That orbit capture is believed to have occurred at 1 a.m. ET on Saturday, NASA said.

"We are beginning the study of arguably the oldest extant primordial surface in the solar system," said Christopher Russell, principal investigator on NASA's Dawn mission. "This region of space has been ignored for far too long. So far, the images received to date reveal a complex surface that seems to have preserved some of the earliest events in Vesta's history, as well as logging the onslaught that Vesta has suffered in the intervening eons."

NASA's Dawn spacecraft obtained the image of Vesta with its framing camera on Sunday, according to the space agency. The probe was in orbit around the proto-planet, at about a distance of 9,500 miles from Vesta's surface, when the photo was snapped.

Each pixel in the image represents roughly 0.88 miles, according to NASA.

The image was taken by Dawn for navigational purposes, but it also serves to present Vesta in greater detail than ever before, the space agency said. The proto-planet is 330 miles in diameter, making it the second-largest asteroid in the main asteroid belt. Though astronomers have been able to obtain images of Vesta for two centuries, according to NASA, surface details have been grainy until the arrival of Dawn in the past couple of days.

The pockmarked surface of Vesta as shown in Dawn's image indicates a long history of collisions with other space objects, according to Russell. That may be further evidence supporting scientists' belief that debris from such collisions on Vesta is a source of a great many meteorites that fall to Earth.

Dawn's journey to Vesta took almost four years and covered 1.7 billion miles in a circuitous route to the asteroid, which circles the sun approximately 117 million miles from Earth. Though the spacecraft now orbits the asteroid, Dawn's delicate dance isn't overthe approach phase will last another three weeks, according to NASA.

During the next three weeks, Dawn will search for other possible satellites of Vesta as it settles into its new role as one itself. The spacecraft and its mission team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. will also be able to compute Vesta's mass with great accuracy after measuring the strength of the asteroid's gravitational tug on Dawn.

Following a one-year stay as Vesta's satellite, during which time Dawn will obtain more images and observe the asteroid's physical properties, the spacecraft is set to travel to the dwarf planet Ceres for a second orbiting mission.

Dawn is expected to arrive at Ceres in February 2015, according to NASA.

Damon Poeter got his start in journalism working for the English-language daily newspaper The Nation in Bangkok, Thailand. He covered everything from local news to sports and entertainment before settling on technology in the mid-2000s. Prior to joining PCMag, Damon worked at CRN and the Gilroy Dispatch. He has also written for the San Francisco Chronicle and Japan Times, among other newspapers and periodicals.
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